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The Best Way to Organize Clothes in a Small Closet

In this video, I’m giving you pro tips on organizing your closet. It is so important to organize your closet efficiently especially if you have a small closet. Watch this video to learn techniques to maximize every inch of usable space in a small clothing closet.

Step 1 – Start Fresh

Move everything out of your closet for a fresh start. This will be an important step later as you will want to review the design of your closet. Please declutter your clothes using the KonMari Method by Marie Kondo or my sorting method. Do not use your main clothing closet to store anything you are not wearing on a regular basis like clothes that do not fit or non-clothing items.

Step 2 – Fold as Much as Possible

Folding your clothes into drawers vertically takes up less space than hanging your clothes on a hanger in the closet. You can usually find space for a tall dresser and this is more possible than building another closet. When selecting a dresser or chest of drawers, get a tall piece with several drawers. A 3-drawer dresser uses as much floor space as a 6 drawer chest of drawers. Again, the plan is to maximize your vertical space.

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Step 3 – Sort by Type and Size

When you sort your clothes by type, you achieve two goals. First, it is more efficient to see what to eliminate when decluttering your clothes. You will make better decisions when you look at categories of clothing because you can see where you have too many of one type of thing in your closet. If you have more than one wash cycles worth of jeans or tee shirts, it is less likely that you will get around to wearing the extras.

An even bigger benefit to hanging your clothes by type and length is that it creates space in your closet for additional hanging and shelf space. By hanging short clothing together, you create space at the bottom of your closet for a shoe rack, dresser, second clothing rod, or cube furniture.

Step 4 – Increase Hanging Space

A typical clothing closet comes with one rod and one shelf. You can increase your hanging space without using any tools by adding a double hang clothing rod. This handy gadget hangs a second rod below your existing clothing rod to provide additional hanging space

You can also increase your hanging space by selecting a thin hanger versus a thick one. This is how hangers rank from thinnest to thickest –

Wire

Velvet

Plastic

Wood

Lingerie (padded)

I use clear plastic hangers in my closet because they do not tangle as easily and they have a swivel head which makes it a no brainer to hang all my clothes in the same direction. For small closets, I recommend velvet hangers as they maximize space and do not tangle as much as wire hangers.